What is it with shortening words that don't need to be shortened?

     I understand that we have acronyms and some words we have a short hand way of writing them such btwn for between. What I don't get is it seems we are on a shortening of word obsession. Other than writing for school where we know we will be graded we tend to write primarily in this short hand style. On the Internet you see people write this way. Lets take this sentence for example. "This needs to stay between me and you please and thanks." In short hand on line you would most likely be written this way, "this needs to stay btwn me n u please n thx." I would not say that this bothers me too much since the Internet communication is so fast that we did shorten some words so that we could be faster. At least the shortening of these words you can still make out the original word.

     I would say this post has been inspired by my little sister. She is 16 and in her junior year of high school. She keeps using the phrase "totes." It drives me absolutely crazy. It means totally but to me it is the plural of tote and when i hear this the image in my mind is of tote bags...I do not think that the word totally needs to be shortened into totes. I feel while talking to someone this shorter version is just silly. If some one ever responded to me, "Oh yeah, totes!" well I'd be like "what?"

     I feel as though short hand writing on line even though it has become mostly the only way people write online usually the short hand version can be easily linked with its original version and its something strictly linked to online communication. When silly short hand words start to become a part of our verbal communication is where I see the problem. I feel as though when people speak in online short hand, they come off as lazy. I think words are important. They express your meaning and if you are shortening everything i feel as though the meaning gets lost in translation. I have been trying to come up with an example from when I was younger of a made up word but I really can't think of any. I am sure there were since those were the days when AIM was huge, myspace invented and then facebook. I guess the best example would be people using AIM "talk" in normal conversations such as lol or ttyl. But I feel like those even though annoying when used in verbal communication are not as bad as "totes." Maybe I am thinking to hard about this or maybe i have just found a pet peeve. I just feel as though some of these "new" words kids are creating you cant even understand what the real word is anymore. Its like a whole new language.